Evacuee memories

My mother, Margaret Queenie Lilian Parker (now Bishop) has given me permission to put details of her experiences as a wartime evacuee and after onto the WWII website. My mother is now 80 and the memories she has of her time as an evacuee can still move her to tears — so it seems that her experiences were not altogether happy ones.

I was evacuated at 13 with my sister, Betty, aged 7, from Battersea, South London, down to Bognor Regis at the end of August 1939. We said goodbye to our parents outside the local school in Battersea, lined up in columns with our gas masks, little suitcases and lapel labels, then walked with our teachers and headmistress to Tooting Bec station.

We had no idea where we were going until we arrived in Bognor Regis, and even then had little idea what was going to happen to us. We were all put into a church hall where we waited to be picked out by the locals. Betty and I were picked by a Mr & Mrs Hedges and stayed with them until Christmas 1939 when we came home for the holidays. Betty and I returned to Bognor Regis to stay at another house where, as time went by, I ended up looking after 14 younger evacuees, the youngest of whom was five. I had to bath the small ones, put them to bed, while making sure the older ones had their baths and got to bed. I became like an unpaid servant. It was a very unhappy experience, the memories of which can still bring tears to my eyes to this day. All the children were thrown out of the house all day on a Saturday, come rain or shine. It was clear we were not wanted and the people were only interested in the money they received for housing evacuees. We were there until September 1940 when Betty and I were moved on to a Mr + Mrs Green who lived on the other side of Bognor Regis who ran a guest house and had an epileptic son.

I had to leave Mr & Mrs Green just after Christmas 1941 as I was about to reach the age of 15. I left my sister Betty in their care and got a job in Bognor Regis living in with a family and looking after their two children, although I became more of a house servant with hardly any time to myself. When my mother came down unexpectedly, the lady of the house asked if she would like to join the family for a meal in the dining room but on learning that I had to have my meal in the kitchen, she said “What’s good enough for my daughter, is good enough for me”. Afterwards, she told me to pack my bags as I was going home!

Sometime after I left Mr & Mrs Green, my mother went down to see Betty again, but couldn’t find her at the house. She found her sitting alone near a pond on a seat with dirty clothes and hair, took her back to the Greens’ house, and immediately brought her home. She was then subsequently evacuated to somewhere near Peterborough to a very nice family where she had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Sadly, the lady died of cancer some time towards the end of the war and mum brought her home again where she stayed.

After returning home to London, I got a job in a crisp factory in Vauxhall that was subsequently bombed in a huge raid over London.. I then worked in Marks & Spencer during 1941 for a while and then, having lied about my age joined the NAAFI at 16+ half (the joining age being 17) at Imperial Court, Kennington. They then sent me to Fareham, though I lived in Warsash where my father was stationed in the Royal Navy. I worked on HMS Collingwood where they trained new naval recruits. I made several friends there and we went to many dances where I met some of the new recruits and had a lot of fun! Shortly after starting there in my job as helping in the kitchens, the chef took some leave and asked me to take over the cooking for all the recruits — quite a challenge for someone of 16 who’d never done any cooking!! Though I was scared, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and none of the meals were ever thrown back at me!

The NAAFI then wanted to transfer me to a nearby army camp located in nearby woods but after my parents had seen it and the lady in charge told them not to let their young daughter work there, they refused to let me be transferred. I left the NAAFI when I was just short of 18 (end 1943) and got a job in a dockers’ café in Southampton. My parents came down to live in Southampton — my father, though still in the navy, was too old to be part of the second front which upset him enormously.

During my time working in Southampton, I often saw trains passing through that were transporting high ranking German army officers who had become prisoners of war.

Mum and I returned to London in early 1944 when I began working again for the NAAFI at the Imperial Court, Kennington.

After my return to London, a friend of my brother’s, who was a prisoner of war at the time in Poland, wrote to his fiancée, asking if she knew anyone who could correspond with a fellow prisoner who had no one to write to. I said I would and we corresponded for 6 or 7 months during which time I met the soldier’s parents. His name was Fred Lawrence and when he returned to England towards the end of May 1945, he was sent to an isolation hospital at Berk Hempstead suffering from typhoid. It was there that I met Fred for the first time. Less than 2 months later, on 21 July 1945, we were married. I had to borrow a wedding dress from another girl who was going to be wed 2 months later as the dresses were in short supply in those days! My daughter, Janet, was born in May 1946.

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